The inscriptions on Etruscan stones are nearly always the names of the persons represented on them. There are but few exceptions to this. We may therefore divide Etruscan glyptography into: I. Etruscan scarabs, with Etruscan or Assyrian subjects. II. Etruscan scarabs, with archaic Greek subjects. There are many more of the latter than the former. The Greek subjects most frequently met with, refer to actions by Herakles, Perseus, Tydeus, Theseus, Peleus, Ulysses, Achilles and Ajax. The time of manufacture and use by the Etruscans was most probably before the IIIrd century B.C., at which time, Etruria was conquered by the Romans, its manufactures destroyed and its artists taken to Rome. The Greeks borrowed the form from the Egyptians, but improved on the engraving, which they made more natural and artistic; finally they suppressed the insect but preserved the oval form of the base. The Romans also adopted, it may be surmised from the Etruscans, the scarab signet and retained its form until the later days of the Republic. Winckelmann, says: Those with the figures or heads of Serapis or Anubis incised upon them are of this period.[116] I think it likely, that those with this deity upon them may go back to the period of the Ptolemys. At the end of the Ist or beginning of the IInd century A.D., arose the gnostic Egyptian sect called the Basilidians. They introduced an amulet or talisman. It was made oval in the form of the base of the Egyptian scarab. Such talisman were usually made of black Egyptian basalt, sometimes of sard or other hard stones. Upon them were engraved mysterious hieroglyphs and figures, called Abraxas, and they are known as Abraxoides. Among the figures engraved was frequently that of the scarabæus. Montfaucon has given a number of them in his Antiquities.[117] Chifflet has also given several.[118] FOOTNOTES: [116] Winckelmann, Art. 2, c. 1. [117] Vol. II., part 2, p. 339. Ed. of Paris. [118] Comp. Fosbrooke Encyc. of Antiq. London, 1825, part I., p. 208. APPENDIX A. The heart of man was considered to be the source from whence proceeded, not only the beginnings of life but also the beginnings of thought. It was symbolized by the scarab. Examples of the heart have been found, some with a representation of the human head at the top of them, and of human hands crossed over them; and others, having a figure of the soul in the shape of a hawk with outstretched wings, incised on one side of the model. Since the foregoing chapters were put in type, which were based on the Book of the Dead as published by M. Paul Pierret in a French translation, from the Turin papyrus and the papyri in the Louvre, as mentioned in my Introduction; the Translation and Commentary of "The Egyptian Book of the Dead" by P. Le Page Renouf, Esq.,[A] Parts I. and II., have appeared.